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Prospect teen's life was short, tragic BY BEN CONERY REPUBLICAN-AMERICAN

Alexandria Desmond at age 15, when she had been placed by the Department of Children and Families at New Hope Residential Treatment Center in South Carolina. Her family said it was the healthiest and safest Alex ever was. (Contributed photo)

PROSPECT — Alexandria Clouse Desmond was 9 years old when she first tried to kill herself. It was a signpost in an already troubled life, one of the moments when her mother realized how profound Alex's problems were.

Those problems eventually led Gina Desmond, of Prospect, to seek help for her daughter from the state. Through the Department of Children and Families, and later the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, Alex received treatment.

Nothing worked.

Less than a decade after Alex's first suicide attempt, her battered body was found stuffed inside a cardboard box in a Hartford apartment. Four young people, from similarly troubled backgrounds, have been charged with her murder.

But Gina Desmond believes the state also deserves some blame.

For five years, Alex was shuttled through the DCF treatment system while officials ignored mounting evidence that her problems were getting worse. In the end, the system failed to save her because officials did not recognize how profoundly sick she was and never kept her in a facility secure enough and suitable to treat her problems.

SUICIDE TO SOUTH CAROLINA

Life started hard for Alexandria Clouse Desmond.

Born two months premature on Feb. 28, 1989, Alex, as her family called her, weighed five pounds nine ounces. Right away, she experienced serious health problems.

A heart valve wouldn't open and close properly, causing her lungs to fill with blood. She underwent surgeries at 5 and 7 months, had trouble eating and vomited frequently.

But her struggles didn't dampen her spirit, her mother said. "Her eyes were always so full of wonder and excitement over everything."

Alex loved sunlight and going for nature hikes with her mother. She was small enough to fit inside her mother's small knapsack. The two would go to church and Alex would sit quietly, tightly gripping her mother's hand.

"She loved being with her mom," said Alex's grandmother, Grace Hyde, whom Alex called Nana.

By the time Alex was 4, Desmond knew her daughter would have a different life.

Instead of playing with other children, Desmond said, her daughter played with objects like chairs and rugs. Desmond said Alex also became aggressive toward her dolls and sometimes physically violent, pushing at her mother.

"She was very strong when she got angry," Desmond said.

But Alex's life wasn't all anger. She took up Irish step dancing at the Horgan Academy in Naugatuck, and dancing became her passion. As a teenager, she could master the latest dance moves she saw on MTV.

After enrolling in kindergarten at St. Francis School in Naugatuck, Alex was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder and medicated. But in many other ways, she was a typical girl: listening nonstop to the Spice Girls' song "Wannabe" when it was a hit, loving amusement park rides with her stepfather, Michael Desmond, and someone who carefully hid candy and bubblegum in the top drawer of her bedroom bureau.

She also suffered from hallucinations.

She told her mother aliens had implanted a chip in her head that gave her orders. She saw blood oozing from the walls.

When she was 9, Alex sliced the veins on her ankle, drank perfume and ingested hair spray, her mother said.

After that, she suffered a continuing cycle of breakdowns and hospitalizations.

When Alex was about 13, Gina Desmond discovered what she thought was a godsend: the Department of Children and Families voluntary services program.

"I thought, 'Oh my God, I finally found just what we need here. Maybe Alex can get the help and services she really, really has to have,'" Desmond said.

Voluntary services is a program DCF offers to families who need custodial and medical help, but cannot afford it. The services go from in-home placements to residential facilities. Voluntary services does not require DCF to take custody of a child.

At first, Gina Desmond's optimism seemed well-placed.

In August 2002, DCF found Alex a placement at New Hope Treatment in Columbia, S.C.

Family members said it was Alex's best placement.

"She wasn't able to run away," Gina Desmond said. "I could go to bed at night knowing my daughter was in a safe spot."

Alex stayed there for nearly three years.

Desmond recalled her daughter as moody, but happy and affectionate, when she was in South Carolina.

Desmond said DCF decided to bring Alex back to Connecticut as part of an effort to cut back out-of-state placements.

The official version for Alex's leaving is less clear.

Documents from New Hope indicate that Alex did not complete the program, while DCF documents offer contradictory explanations.

One DCF document states that Alex "basically" completed treatment. Another says she did complete the program, and was "ready for a step down," meaning she would require less intensive care.

Whatever the reason, Gina Desmond was happy her daughter was coming home.

Alex was almost 16 when she returned to New England with the hint of a southern drawl, and the same old problems. They would only get worse.

"Alex became very tough, violent, and her emotional problems seemed 100 times worse than what they originally were," Desmond recalled.

The Department of Children and Families plan for Alex's treatment was cutting-edge for Connecticut: placement in a therapeutic group home.

Therapeutic group homes have become a big business in Connecticut and are one of the cornerstones of DCF's current approach to treating children's mental illnesses. They are part of a decades-long thrust against large institutions for the mentally ill and part of a trend toward the privatization of state social services. Located in neighborhoods, group homes usually house about five children and a staff of caregivers.

DCF officials say children with mental illness benefit from the smaller groups and more intensive therapy. The group homes also allow for residents to have a more typical childhood, they say.

"We don't want to see our children and adolescents living in institutions," said Peter Mendelson, DCF bureau chief for behavioral health and medicine. "We want them residing in communities."

The group homes are licensed by DCF and run by private companies. The first one opened in 2005. Now there are more than 40, for which the state spends $40 million a year. That number is expected to increase to about $50 million when all the planned group homes are opened.

In early 2005, when Alex first returned to Connecticut, the group homes had not yet opened. While waiting for a spot, DCF put Alex in a psychiatric facility in Hamden called High Meadows and later moved her to Riverview Hospital, a similar facility in Middletown. The chaos that engulfed her during those roughly 10 months offered a chilling glimpse of what was to come: She repeatedly got into fights, ran away and was charged with pulling a fire alarm.

But Alex still hadn't lost her kindness. Gina Desmond said Alex would ask her to bring extra boxes of fruit snacks and soda to share with the other children at High Meadows. Alex also took new children under her wing. She was as loyal a friend as you could have, her mother said.

According to a report from the state Office of Legislative Research, children sent to DCF group homes must not exhibit violent behavior or have a history of running away. Although Alex had gotten into fights and run away from High Meadows, DCF still sent her to a Danbury group home in November 2005.

For more than a year, the cycle of breakdowns, fights, arrests and running away continued unabated. As she approached her 17th birthday, Alex went from group homes to psychiatric hospitals to state facilities and back again.

A DCF treatment plan from February 2006 reflected Alex's problems: "While it has always been hoped that Alex could move on to a group home setting and do well, that appears not to be the case."

At the time, Alex had been moved from the group home to Riverview Hospital, a state-run institution for mentally ill and emotionally disturbed children.

Despite its conclusion, the report came up with an incongruous strategy: "Once she is ready for discharge from Riverview Hospital, DCF will plan for her next placement setting, preferably a return to a group home."

Desmond said she never thought Alex belonged in a group home, and she grew increasingly frustrated with DCF and Alex's constantly changing medications, clinicians and treatment strategies.

When Alex's medications were right, Desmond said, things weren't too bad. In journal entries from the time, Alex wrote that she wanted to write an autobiography called "The Windows of Reality."

When times were good, Alex, who liked to dye her hair all colors — from red and blue to winter plum — would say she wanted to be a beautician.

During the bad times, she wanted to be a lawyer or psychiatrist so she could help children like her.

Times were mostly bad. Her mother said Alex was frequently out of control.

Months before Alex was sent to the group home in Danbury, Desmond contacted Michael Agranoff, a lawyer whose Web site she had found while searching the Internet.

A self-described "country lawyer" from Ellington, Agranoff frequently mentions that he abhors bureaucracy and now makes a living specializing in what he calls "DCF defense."

Desmond hired Agranoff at a time when she was becoming increasingly concerned about her daughter's future. Like Desmond, Agranoff believed Alex belonged in a secure psychiatric facility. No specific facility was ever discussed.

Though unwilling to become Alex's conservator because she thought it would interfere with a traditional mother-daughter relationship with Alex, Desmond still believed DCF was not taking Alex's illness seriously enough.

But even if Desmond had become the conservator and sought to have Alex committed long-term to a psychiatric hospital, Desmond still faced significant obstacles. The probate court would have required a hearing and would not have committed Alex unless experts said she needed a long-term commitment. It is rare for the probate court to make such commitments.

"At this time, Alex is functioning well, starting to make progress with her behavioral problems and her placement and attendant services are appropriate for her needs," an August 2006 letter from DCF to Agranoff read. "At the present time, there is no indication from any of the professionals working with or treating Alex that she requires a commitment to a secure psychiatric facility."

But after months of seeing Alex run away, attack staff and spend two brief stints in prison, DCF sought a new approach for Alex near the end of 2006. She was sent to Bennington School in Vermont, a boarding school for emotionally disturbed children.

The program was no more successful that those in the Connecticut group homes. On New Year's Eve, just weeks after she arrived, Alex swallowed batteries and screws and attacked a staff member. She was found hours later face-down in a ditch.

Alex was supposed to stay at the school for at least a year, but she was kicked out on Jan. 12. School officials strongly recommended she be put in a secure mental facility.

The secure facility she ended up in was a prison.

MURDER

Getting kicked out of Bennington School amounted to a violation of her probation, which automatically sent her to prison. Her lawyer requested Alex stay there until she turned 18.

As her 18th birthday approached, Alex had grown into a round-faced young women who favored urban-inspired clothing with a tough look. Those charged with taking care of her felt prison was the safest place for her.

With the closing of the state's mental hospitals, the prison system has become Connecticut's mental health safety net. The number of teenagers with mental illness in prison is increasing, according to Jeanne Millstein, the state's child advocate.

In February 2007, Alex was one of 22 teenage girls at York Correctional Institution. An earlier survey by Millstein from November 2006 showed that of the 28 girls at York, all but one had a significant history with DCF. In testimony to the legislature earlier this year, Millstein said the girls don't receive the treatment they need in prison.

After Alex's 18th birthday, she was released from prison, having been there longer than the maximum sentence she could have faced. Though DCF could have continued providing treatment to Alex until she was 21, the agency immediately transferred her to the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services. She was placed at DMHAS's Cedarcrest, a psychiatric hospital in Newington, lasting there for about a month before she ran away for the last time.

Ten days before she left Cedarcrest, Alex wrote a letter to her younger sister, Lilly, wishing her a happy 9th birthday and offering sisterly advice about staying on the straight and narrow. It also offered a glimpse into how Alex saw her future.

"Soon I'm going to my own apartment in New Haven in four weeks I'll be there," she wrote. "It will be nice, I'm going to decorate my house really pretty and creatively."

About two weeks later, after five days on the run, Alex was hanging out at an apartment in Hartford that was paid for by DMHAS as part of an independent living program. The apartment building at 212 Laurel St. is a nondescript brick box just off Interstate 84.

Michael Davis, 21, and his 19-year-old girlfriend, Leslie Caraballo, 19, lived in the apartment at 212 Laurel, but other young people suffering from mental illness who had long histories with state services were also drifting in and out.

The night of April 27, Davis and Caraballo were joined by Alex, and another couple, 18-year-olds Darzell Weinstein and Tiara Dixon. Another 18-year-old, Samantha Semprit, joined them later.

The five young people who were there that night would later tell police different stories about what happened.

What's somewhat consistent is that Davis, Caraballo, Weinstein and Dixon apparently turned on Alex after a game of Monopoly. Semprit apparently had nothing to do with it.

It may have been that Alex was flirting with Davis, or that she accused Weinstein of raping her, or that she stole a pair of earrings and Davis' Social Security number. Maybe it was none of those things. Whatever the cause, the fight escalated quickly.

The four young people have been accused of taking part in a beating that led to Alex being strangled.

Inexplicably, police said Davis told them he wanted to make the crime look like someone was trying to cover up a sexual assault. He said they tore off her pants and underwear, assaulted her with a pen and poured bleach on her.

Police say they then wrapped her body in plastic bags and sheets and stuffed it into a cardboard microwave oven box.

About 3 p.m. on April 30, two Hartford police detectives joined by Prospect police officers knocked on Gina Desmond's door.

"It was horrible," she said. "I felt like my whole world had crashed and part of me died with her."

Davis, Caraballo, Weinstein and Dixon now face murder charges.

AFTERMATH

In the weeks after her daughter's killing, Gina Desmond says she didn't sleep much. She waited for the phone to ring, thinking Alex would call.

When sleep finally came it brought only a slight reprieve.

About a month after Alex's killing, the night before Mother's Day, Desmond dreamed about Alex.

"I was able to hug her and she asked me if I could visit her, and in my dream, of course I realized that's what it was, and I said, 'No, Al, I can't visit you now you're in heaven,'" she said. "And then I woke up crying, remembering this is real, this is so real, but I was so excited at the same time to be able to have hugged her again even if it was just a dream."

Desmond remains bitter toward the state, which she believed just pushed her daughter through an impersonal system.

"It kind of reminds me of a going to a grocery store and ringing out your order," she said. "Each kid gets rung out, goes through the system, pushed through."

Desmond still believes her daughter needed to be in a secure facility.

"I really don't feel that they took her cries out for help seriously enough, and had they done so, Alex may not have ended up like she is today, unfortunately," she said.

Alex's own words from her personal journal proved prophetic: "If God forbid, for any reason that I got killed, at least I know I died of being too nice, and I'm left to be remembered for the good."

What's worse is that even before Alex was killed, Desmond could not shake the sensation that her daughter was already lost.

When things were going well for Alex, her eyes danced. But when they weren't, she had a flat look, Desmond said. By the end, after all she had been through, Desmond said her daughter had become hardened, way to tough looking for a teenager.

Desmond said that, in better times, when she visited her daughter, Alex would smile and her eyes would light up. By the end of her life, she said, hugging Alex was like embracing a doll, lifeless.

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